


Founding Rome

by magebirdi



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: and the occasional reference to him throughout the fic, featuring just a little bit of Thomas at the beginning, it was originally going to be super angsty but i couldn't stop roman and remus from becoming bffs, rip me and my poorly plotted story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22202530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magebirdi/pseuds/magebirdi
Summary: Creativity splits. While the other sides grapple with what that means for them, the newly separated Creativity decides that being two people isn't nearly as bad as it sounds.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders & Deceit Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Logic | Logan Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders
Comments: 21
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I never thought I'd write a Sander Sides fic, but here I am. This fic was inspired by a wonderful drawing made by the equally wonderful ask-us-sanders-sides over on Tumblr. I saw their drawing of Deceit reacting to the split - and, more specifically to Remus - and just had to try my hand at writing it. What was originally going to be a single scene decided to become a multi-chapter fic. I have no idea how frequently I'll post in this or how long this story will be, but it felt like a fun one to tell.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it, and please let me know what you think in a comment!

**Prologue**

Thomas Sanders had come to a decision. 

It was the kind of decision you don’t spend hours upon hours agonizing - it was natural, quick and just made sense given a variety of factors. The factors don’t entirely matter. Thomas, even, doesn’t entirely matter. Because while this is a story about the complexity of Thomas Sanders, it is about the _complexity_. Not Thomas. 

When the decision was made, Thomas was just barely in high school. It was a hot, scorching summer day in Florida, and Thomas was lounging in his bedroom. He had plenty of things to occupy him, and plenty of things to occupy the many facets of his personality: his morality, his logic, his deceit, his creativity and his anxiety. There was another side, too, but that side was that kind of side that enjoyed solitude. 

Thomas was sitting in his bed when the thought came to him. As mentioned before, it wasn’t a moment of great realization. It was him thinking about his old childhood stories - childhood being only a few years before, and even a few months before - and thinking about how much his creative tastes had changed since then. It was a time before Vine, so these stories, while something that could be shared, were something deeply personal. 

The decision wasn’t really a decision. It was a stray thought that would go on to shape how he defined himself as a person: the idea that maybe, just maybe, some of his stories weren’t the kind of stories that he wanted to tell now that he was older. It’s important to stress that none of these stories were inherently bad. _Thomas_ wasn’t inherently bad. But there was something cringeworthy about the gore he tossed around because he could, the inappropriate humor that he _still_ found a little entertaining, and all of the taboo words and ideas that were fun to share when first granted the freedom to but not as funny farther down the road. 

And, in that single moment, Thomas changed the lives of the sides he didn’t even know existed. 

**xXx**

Farther down the road, a certain side would decide that “dark sides” was an appropriate title for a good chunk of Thomas’s personality. It’s hard to tell if this was out of repressed feelings, a desire for conflict, or just the plain drama of good versus evil, but the dark sides weren’t technically an entity on that summer day. There was just “us” and “them”. Who us and who them was depended on which side you asked. Deceit would insist that the better pair was Anxiety and him, while Morality would be quick to side with Logic. There was the “other” as well; neither pair liked to claim companionship with the side who generally got on all of their nerves. 

But then there was the prince. 

The prince wasn’t really on anyone’s side, but they’d love him regardless. Creativity is something that can’t be confined or defined by nature. Creativity would help Deceit with his most creative lies -- never wanting Thomas to get in trouble, especially when there were stories to create! When Anxiety was feeling particularly anxious, Creativity would be there to help create even more terrible scenarios. 

(Misery likes company, and those increasingly more horrific scenarios ran the surprising effect of calming Anxiety down when he realized how outlandish and impossible Creativity’s ideas were.) 

Creativity was Morality’s right hand man when coming up with something particularly nice to do; all of the best gifts came from his imagination. And though Logic and Creativity argued on principle, Creativity needed Logic for worldbuilding and Logic needed Creativity for problem solving. And Creativity would occasionally help the “other” as well, but that was admittedly a rarity. 

Still, it would be hard to call Creativity “good” or “evil”. Creativity just was. Creativity was rescuing a damsel in distress from a hungry, man-eating dragon, but Creativity also was creating the dragon and the tower the princess was locked inside in the first place. 

(Creativity had no interest in damsels, obviously, but there was something to be said for rescuing them.) 

And while the damsel in distress, locked away in the tower by a hungry, man-eating dragon would have been a metaphor on most days: it wasn’t today. Morality and Logic were dictating Thomas’s actions right now, with a hint of Anxiety. Creativity could enjoy himself by conjuring up a good old adventure in Thomas’s mind. He was bruised and battered after defending the damsel from the hot blasts of air and flame once he got her down from the tower, but the injuries were just temporary. And they were temporary enough for him to get a _really_ good idea. 

“Poison fangs!” Creativity shouted, with an excited snap and maniacal grin. The damsel, who bore a striking resemblance to one of Thomas’s classmates, had a blank look on her face at this realization - Creativity was so caught up in improving the dragon that he had forgotten to make her react. 

That was quickly rectified, and she adopted an appropriate look of horror when oozing green liquid started dripping from the noticeably larger fangs in the dragon’s mouth. 

Now, the poison had to do _something_ , or the quest wouldn’t be worthwhile. So Creativity really shouldn’t have been surprised when the poison hurt like hell, seeing that he had been the one to create the poison in the first place, but he had been distracted by improving his sword. A handsome hero, after all, had to have an equally glorious sword when slaying a dragon. 

Creativity hissed in pain and retreated, glaring down at the wound festering through the cut in his sleeve. “That was a _great_ idea,” Creativity hissed, voice dripping with sarcasm. It was only after the words left his lips that he realized he wasn’t really sure who the sarcasm was directed to. After all, he hadn’t dragged any of the other sides into his escapades today. The damsel was just a damsel; he hadn’t given her any other part to play than looking scared. 

“All good dragons need poison,” he told himself, though his voice was a little bit uncertain. He wasn’t exactly comforting himself; it felt more like a one-sided argument. The dragon stopped, the damsel stood still and Creativity mused over a problem he didn’t quite understand. Maybe he had been cursed by some witch during the adventure, and then cursed to forget her existence. It could have been the Dragon-Witch; he loved adding her into his quests. 

But that explanation didn’t feel right. 

And a dull, throbbing headache appeared to accompany the uncertainty and confusion. 

“Creativity,” a voice said. It was a stern kind of voice, but also slightly worried. And while the sides technically had the same voice on most days, save for when they felt like changing up their appearances for the heck of it - Creativity being the worst offender - it was still easy to tell who was talking without seeing them. So Creativity knew that it was Deceit who had just interrupted his crisis and battle, even before he turned to see the other side folding his arms besides the dragon. 

(A dragon who notably had the same color scales as Deceit someday would.) 

“Yes?” Creativity replied. His head was still throbbing, and he was struggling to stand now. But Creativity was just as good as faking being alright as Deceit could, so Deceit wasn’t any the wiser. “What’s up...pants-on-fire?” 

Deceit frowned. 

“That’s the best you can do today?” Deceit asked, his false condescension hiding his surprise. Deceit, though seemingly dark, was a facet of Thomas’s personality, and was therefore not a malicious side. He did have a heart. 

He just did his best to hide it. 

Creativity gave a strained grin, a searing pain shooting through his skull. 

Deceit shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Have you seen Anxiety?” 

Creativity scoffed. 

“Anxiety doesn’t like to come here,” he reminded the other side. “He says it’s too dangerous. Go ask Morality and Logic - I have dragons to slay, damsels to save, and kingdoms to rule-” 

“ _Creativity,_ ” Deceit interrupted, with an urgency that didn’t match the nonchalance of him readjusting his gloves. “If he’s not with you, then he’s with Morality and Logic. Do you remember the last time he was left alone with them?” 

Creativity, in fact, didn’t, but the pain was so much that he couldn’t come up with a good retort to hide his lack of knowledge. He gave a meek, pitiful shrug. Even the damsel and the dragon looked concerned at his lack of a spoken answer. 

Deceit gave Creativity a long, hard look before sighing and storming off to other parts of Thomas’s mind. In Deceit’s defense, Creativity was the type of person who could be chaotic one moment and orderly the next. Useful ideas were typically balanced out with less useful ones, and Deceit simply thought that Creativity was too off in his own little world to care about the ramifications of Anxiety interacting with any other side. 

If Deceit had stayed a little longer, he might have seen Creativity go crashing to the ground as the pain became too much to handle. 

A fantastical world faded into nothingness. 

And then, something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you couldn't tell from the writing style, I spent a good chunk of this morning reading Good Omens fanfiction. I don't think the future chapters will mirror this style - it really isn't the type I regularly use - but I thought it was okay to use for a prologue.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Let me know what you think in the comments, and swing by ask-us-sanders-sides if you want to see the inspiration for this fic.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 1**

The woods were dark, and cold, and everything _hurt_. His head pounded and pounded and pounded, and a million voices seem to whisper at him from the shadows in the trees. Image after image filtered through his mind. There was blood, there was pain, and there was hundreds of thousands of funny jokes that wouldn’t be funny if told to the wrong person. Somewhere, a small part of him knew that things were meant to be like this. That order was supposed to balance out the chaos. To offer a lifeline when the darkness became too strong. 

But he was _drowning_ now. 

He let out a broken laugh that wasn’t ever supposed to be his, and wrapped his arms tight around his body. 

There was a dragon in the forest. 

A big, hungry man-eating dragon, with poison-tipped fangs and flames so hot it could burn him with nothing left. He could hear it moving through the woods, shifting in and out of the shadows. It didn’t sneak so much as blend, hiding its heavy footsteps within the frenzied chattering of the birds fleeing across the horizon. 

“Dragon, dragon,” he whispered. It sounded a little bit like a song, so he decided it was going to be one. Songs were nice, weren’t they? He gave a little giggle - though it became a hiccup as tears slid down his face - and perked up a little when he heard the brush move. “Dragon, dragon, come out wherever you are. Dragon, dragon, you can’t run far~” 

He gave another broken laugh. A maniacal grin danced across his face, his heart pounding in his chest. He hoped the dragon would come soon. He hoped it would come soon and swallow him in one big, painless bite, because then the chaos would stop ringing in his ears and pressing on him from every side. 

The brush parted. 

He leaned up against a nearby tree, the song dying on his lips when he realized it wasn’t a dragon that he was looking at. 

It was a person, and a very, _very_ familiar one. 

“Dee…!” he said. Tears were streaming down his face now in thick, heavy bucketfuls. But it was alright, because another side was here! He took a step forward, reached a shaking hand out, and then promptly fainted because of the poison coursing through his veins. 

**xXx**

It just made sense to grab the sword when he woke up. 

His head felt clearer than it ever did, which absolutely _reeked_ of the Dragon-Witch's weird magic. There was also the somewhat familiar voices talking about kidnapping him, which was a good enough reason to grab the sword on its own. And, _sure_ , the last thing he remembered was passing out fighting a dragon, but it wouldn't be the first time the quest changed when he wasn't paying enough attention. 

"We can't kidnap him!" the first voice said. Its owner was worried, nervous and a little bit scared. He resisted the urge to smile - he must have heard of his exploits. 

"It's not kidnapping," the second voice said. It was calmer, cooler and lacking emotion. 

"We took him from the forest!" 

The second voice's owner let out a sigh. "We moved him because he was bleeding, Patton. I don't think it counts as kidnapping." 

There was a pause. Feigning sleep, he rolled over on his side and peeked an eye open to see his captors. 

He resisted the urge to frown. Both were too close for him to get a good look at their faces. But he _did_ see the person right beside his bed fold his arms with a disappointed noise. "It doesn't feel right." 

"Would you feel better if we let him bleed out in the forest and watched him there?" 

There wasn't a response. 

He was starting to think it was because the second voice's owner had reluctantly come to the same consensus as the first's, but then he felt someone hesitantly prod him in the face. 

He bolted up, hands reaching for a sword they carelessly had left at his bedside. He would have jumped out of the bed, too, if the two captors weren't sitting at his bedside. 

He pointed his sword at the one who had poked him. "How dare you touch me, foul-" 

He paused. 

"...Morality?" he hesitantly said. His gaze traveled over to the other captor - who, like Morality, wasn't actually a captor. "Logic?" 

The two exchanged a look as he lowered his sword. 

"Hi, kiddo," Morality said. His voice was hesitant, still, and surprisingly wary. 

He frowned. He had actually been frowning since he tried looking at them, but he hadn't even noticed. He was too focused on figuring out why they had interrupted his quest and brought him away from the dragon - didn't they know he had a damsel to finish rescuing? 

Morality's own smile faltered. 

"What's wrong?" he asked Morality. The other side faltered, a nervous look flickering across his face as he shot Logic another look. He decided to follow Morality's lead. Morality and Anxiety were terrible with giving answers; he always went to Deceit and Logic when he needed an explanation on something. 

"Who are you?" Logic asked. 

He faltered. "Did you get poisoned, too?" he slowly asked. Sides could heal injuries like that without any problems - he had healed his cuts the moment he realized who he was with - but Logic might not have known that the poison fangs had nasty side effects. 

"Poison…?" Logic questioned. 

Morality bit his lip. "We don't know what you're talking about," he said. "Can you please tell us who you are?" 

He frowned again, finally getting back to his feet and looking the two over. Logic was studying him. Morality was, too, but not in the same way. Morality was scared like Anxiety usually was; Logic was studying him like Thomas had studied that owl pellet the last week of school in his science class. 

He held out his sword and puffed out his chest with all the bravado a side like him was supposed to have. "I'm Creativity!" He didn't know what game they were playing right now, but he could play it. He loved games. 

(He just wished this game had some kind of rule set, even though he had never cared about rules during impromptu games before -- he needed rules to give his part in the game structure.) 

Logic and Morality shared another look, though it was mostly Morality giving the look. He was starting to fiddle with his glasses, too. It seemed like the last thing he wanted to do was confront what had just been said, even though it was very much the answer they were looking for. This wasn’t some quest in his imagination; they just wanted his name. 

“You can’t be Creativity,” Logic bluntly said. 

He lowered the sword. 

“I _am_ Creativity,” he slowly insisted. 

Logic shook his head; Morality stared down at his glasses with an intensity Creativity didn’t even know was possible. Still, something _weird_ was going on. And while he normally didn’t have any trouble coming up with unique solutions to situations like this - ignoring how they were usually wrong unique solutions - his mind felt disturbingly bland when he searched it for an explanation. Maybe they were right. Maybe he wasn’t- 

No. He was Creativity! He just felt a little weird. Maybe he hadn’t gotten all of the poison out of his veins, or maybe their reactions were throwing him off. He wasn’t the logical side -- he couldn’t come up with an explanation as fast as Logic could. 

Better yet, maybe this _wasn’t_ Logic and Morality. Or, at least, maybe Logic wasn’t Logic. Morality did seem like Morality, but Logic being someone else would give this a very convenient explanation… 

He crossed his arms. 

“Are you Deceit?” he asked. Logic looked appalled at the suggestion, but maybe that was part of the act. “Is this some kind of _weird_ payback for me not helping you find Anxiety before? I told you, I had dragons to slay, damsels to save, and kingdoms to rule.” 

Morality and Logic-or-Deceit shared another look. 

He really wasn’t liking those looks. 

Morality bit his lip. “Have you seen what you look like?” 

“Of course I have,” he said. He altered his clothes, sometimes, for the sake of a good quest, but he knew what his usual outfit was. There was the basic gray uniform, with a brilliant sash and gold embellishments. He had that little gray streak in his hair, too, though it was always hard to tell if it was a very light gray or a piercing white. And his eyes were Thomas’s, obviously. Those never really changed for any of them. 

“How recently?” Logic-or-Deceit-but-probably-Logic asked. 

He screwed his face in concentration. “Before I fought the dragon?” he hesitantly guessed. He wasn’t really sure - it wasn’t exactly the type of thing he regularly did. 

“You should look now…” Morality suggested, trailing off into an uncomfortable silence. 

Frowning, Creativity did as requested. He glanced down at his outfit. He didn’t get what the fuss was about. The only change he had made to the outfit in the past five minutes was fixing all of the cuts in the fabric he had gotten from the dragon’s talons- 

“Why are my clothes _white_?” he asked, giving a surprised yelp at his change in appearance. He glanced up a little further and was horrified to realize that his rainbow sash had been swapped with a bland red one. (He was even more horrified to realize he liked this simplified outfit.) He glanced back up at Logic and Morality. Logic’s face was devoid of emotion; Morality’s was full of too much. 

Feeling a pit settle in his gut, Creativity conjured a mirror in his hand. 

He held it up and stared at his face. 

The white streak was gone. 

His hair was the same boring shade of brown that Thomas’s was. 

And while every side shared Thomas’s face, there was always something different about it. It was like with their voices. They were all a part of Thomas, but they were a specialized part. And Creativity was _terrified_ when he realized that he couldn’t recognize himself in his reflection. 

“We felt another side appear in Creativity’s forest,” Logic said. He hated how Logic was saying it like he _wasn’t_ Creativity. Even if he looked different, he was still him! He wasn’t some stranger. A stranger wouldn’t remember being someone else, and wouldn’t know that Logic and Morality were, well, Logic and Morality. “When Morality and I went to meet the new side, we found you bleeding on the ground. We brought you back to the main room in Thomas’s mindspace.” 

“His bedroom,” Morality quietly explained. “Do you need to sit down?” 

He shook his head. He did, but he really didn’t feel like moving right now. “I’m Creativity,” he weakly insisted. “I-I have to be. Who else would I be?” 

Logic, for once, looked uncertain of the answer.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 2**

Virgil had been pacing around his room for the past hour. 

Deceit was trying his best not to focus on the sound of Virgil’s sneakers pounding on his floorboards, but it was becoming increasingly harder to focus on something else. Deceit, to some extent, understood Virgil’s worries. The sight of the unconscious, unfamiliar side in Deceit’s bed was enough to make even _Deceit_ anxious; he could only guess how anxious the literal embodiment of anxiety felt right now. 

“Something’s wrong,” Virgil muttered behind him. 

He didn’t even raise his head to look at Virgil. He was studying the side in his bed, a hand absentmindedly scratching at the rash that had appeared on left his cheek the other day. It wasn’t a regular kind of rash - Thomas didn’t have it, and none of the other sides did, either. He told himself he was overthinking it, but he knew that he was just lying to himself. 

After all, he was the personification of lying. 

But, strange rashes aside, there was the issue of the side currently laying in his bed. Something about the side felt familiar. Maybe it was just the white highlight in his hair. It was nearly identical to the one Creativity had, but his sleeping face and outfit were all wrong. It was the kind of outfit that belonged on a villain, not on the hero Creativity always painted himself to be in his tales. 

_\--None of them were really “good” or “evil”. They just **were**. It was what Thomas decided to do with them that influenced their roles in his life, and in the section of his mind that they called his home. _

_So what was giving him that rash?--_

“We had to take him, Virgil,” Deceit carefully reminded him. He still didn’t look, and didn’t move from his chair. He just continued to scratch and stare. “He was passed out in the middle of the forest and Creativity was playing with that dragon of his again. We couldn’t let our newest side get burnt to a crisp - even _if_ the dragon is just a figment of the prince’s imagination.” 

“Not that,” Virgil hissed. “I _get_ bringing him here. It’s _him_.” 

Deceit finally offered Virgil a glance. Virgil faltered in his pacing, but the worried look on his face remained. “We don’t even know what he does yet.” 

“Come on, Dee!” Virgil said, voice rising. “Look at what he’s wearing. _We_ were the ones who found him first. Not Morality, not Logic, and not Creativity. Doesn’t that mean that he’s meant to be with us? And if he’s meant to be with us, what does that say about how Thomas views _us_ -” 

The words abruptly deepened and reverberated throughout the room. Deceit stiffened; Virgil’s eyes widened as he covered his mouth. It wasn’t the first time Virgil’s voice had done that recently, but it was the worst of them yet. 

Deceit pushed his chair away from the bed. 

Getting to his feet, he turned his back to the new side. He could focus on him later. Virgil needed more attention right now. Deceit couldn’t offer false reassurances to someone who was asleep, but he could give Virgil the empty comfort he knew he needed right now. “It must be some trick Creativity’s concocted,” he promised in a soft, soothing tone. “For all we know, Creativity met him first, and asked him to take part in his scheme for the day. You know how hard it is to resist Creativity’s charms when he’s desperate for an adventure.” 

Virgil’s posture relaxed. 

Hands still over his mouth, he whispered, “Are you sure?” 

Deceit nodded. 

Virgil let his arms drop to his side. 

He gave Deceit a shaky smile, moving from the border of the room to the bedside. “We could blame the voice on him, too?” 

“Of course,” Deceit reassured him. “And I’m sure he’s to blame for…” 

He caught himself before he could address the elephant in the room: the rash he was still itching to scratch. Virgil nodded in agreement, but he couldn’t tell if Virgil was agreeing with his confirmation or the topic neither one of them was willing to address. 

Giving Virgil a cool, collected smile that he didn’t really feel, Deceit joined Virgil at the bedside. The new side would hopefully wake soon, and all of their queries would be answered. 

_\--It was a lie and he knew it. He didn’t want the side to wake up anytime soon, and he knew he was selfish for thinking that. If the side woke up, then all of Virgil’s worst fears would be confirmed to be true. And something told him that whoever this person was, he would have none of the answers._

_Did Deceit even want them?--_

Virgil’s eyes suddenly widened again. 

“ _Dee_ , he’s up,” he hissed again, voice loud, deep and hollow as he pulled away from Deceit’s side. Before Deceit had a chance to get a response in - or go rushing after Virgil - a shaking hand grabbed onto his wrist. 

“Dee?” the side said. 

Deceit turned to look back at him. 

There hadn’t been any wounds. Deceit was sure of it. He had checked when he first heard him call his name in the forest; all he had was a beaten, bloodied outfit. But the way that the other side was sitting made it look like he was ill - one shaky hand clinging onto his wrist, and the other holding his forehead. His body was bent in on itself, and his eyes were wide and panicked. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought he was looking at Virgil having another one of his panic attacks. 

“You’re giving me a funny look, Dee,” he whispered. A giggle left his lips, but tears were streaming down his face. “I don’t think you’d be giving me that look if you knew what was running through my head right now - like what I could do with Anxiety over there, or what I thought when I first woke up.” 

Virgil stepped back into the shadows. “...What would you do with me?” 

The hand he was cradling his forehead fell down to his mouth, and he drew a hesitant, uneven line across his lips with his fingers. “I can’t tell you. You already don’t like me, and I _really_ don’t like me, so I don’t think telling you is a great idea. Even though I _really_ want to share. I feel so _silly_ right now!” 

The last part was followed by another broken laugh. 

Deceit jerked his hand free and took a step back. 

The side’s face fell. 

“Don’t go, Dee,” he whispered. “ _Please_. Anxiety is always scared of me, but you’re never scared. You just think I’m annoying. And I should be bothered by that, but I’m not. Isn’t that funny? I _like_ the way you’re looking at me right now, and the way that Anxiety’s cowering in the shadows.” 

Virgil let out a quiet, barely audible whimper. It was only a matter of time before he bolted - he was always a bigger fan of flight instead of fight. 

But Deceit had to fight. He had to stay here and force answers out of whoever this side was, even as everything he said was pointing to one conclusion he didn’t want to make. There was only one side this theatrical, and only one side that Virgil tended to avoid. 

His gaze lingered on the side’s white highlight. “Who are you?” 

The side frowned. 

“I thought I was the one with the mental issues,” the side commented, crossing his shaking arms. “You just saw me earlier! You were looking for Anxiety - and you must have found him, or else he wouldn’t be chilling in your room. What _is_ he doing here, anyways? I can come up with all kinds of ideas, but something tells me you wouldn’t like them-” 

Deceit’s eyes widened. 

“Dee,” Virgil whispered, “who did you meet when looking for me?” 

Deceit glanced back at him. 

Virgil was as pale as a ghost. He looked like he had seen one, too - eyes wet like he was about to cry, and hands shaking as he clasped them together in front of him. “You forgot about meeting him, right? You-You didn’t just meet him in the woods like you said.” 

Deceit slowly glanced from Virgil to the side in his bed. 

The side with Creativity’s white streak. 

“Creativity?” Deceit asked. 

“It took you long enough,” Creativity remarked, tilting his head to the side. “What gave it away?” 

Deceit froze. 

And Virgil fell down to the floor, a terrified, horrified sob wrenching itself free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the most difficult things with this chapter was trying to figure out how to write Deceit and Virgil. Remus was a little difficult, too, but it was hard figuring out what Deceit and Virgil would be like pre-Sanders Sides. My personal headcanon is that they would have gained their "dark side" traits the older that Thomas got. The rash is a precursor to the scales that Deceit got, and the deepening voice is something I've noticed Virgil use in a few of the videos. If the split was prompted by Thomas's views on his mentality changing, I thought they would be experiencing similar identity issues to Creativity.
> 
> (Deceit also tends to act like a villain, and I like to think that he wouldn't act that way before Thomas decided he needed to be actively repressed.) 
> 
> I also wanted to show that Deceit and Virgil were genuinely close at one point in their lives. My take on their relationship is similar to how I view my own past friendships; there was a time where they were close and everything was perfect, but then they grew up and became different people who didn't really mesh.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Please let me know what you think in a comment. I'm always grateful for kudos, but I'd chose a comment over a kudo any day. <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 3**

Virgil knew that Thomas was changing.

That was what he had been discussing with Morality and Logic before they felt the emergence of the new side. Before Logic and Morality went rushing off to Creativity’s forest, and before Virgil retreated to the safety of Dee’s bedroom. Thomas wasn’t supposed to _get_ new sides. The sides he had covered every aspect of his personality. For a new side to appear so suddenly after that conversation, Virgil knew it just had to be his fault.

And when he appeared in Dee’s room, and Dee said he was going to look for the newest facet of Thomas’s personality, Virgil hadn’t wanted to go. Something bad was going to happen. He could _feel_ it. But he didn’t say anything - he knew Dee was going to go either way. So he mustered up the courage to tag along and try finding the new side, even though still lingered behind Dee as they walked through the darkest forest that Creativity had ever conjured.

Dee was the one who found the side first. He returned to Virgil holding the side in his arms, looking more worried than he ever did. The look only lasted a few seconds. Looks like that always did. Virgil knew Dee was good at hiding how he really felt; it was a perk of him being the deceitful side to Thomas’s personality. 

And Virgil had known it, then.

He had known the truth that neither one of them wanted to face. The little white streak, the regal clothes, and the placement in the forest? He just _had_ to be Creativity. And Virgil had just been talking with Logic and Morality about how dark Thomas’s imagination was becoming. About how worried that made them - Logic because it was immature, Morality because some of his ideas weren’t morally just, and Virgil because he was terrified of Thomas being rejected.

If Creativity was different now, it was _all his fault_.

“Don’t cry, Anxiety!” Creativity chirped, _giggling_ at how Virgil was pulling his legs close to his chest and breathing heavy. And Dee was just _standing_ there, itching away at that stupid rash that had been bugging him for the past week. “I haven’t even said anything to make you cry yet.”

If Virgil wasn’t so busy hyperventilating, he might have realized that Creativity was sobbing, too.

“How...How did this happen?” Dee slowly asked. He wasn’t making eye contact with either one of the other sides as he spoke -- his gaze lingered on a single spot on the wall across from him. 

“Hell if I know,” Creativity nonchalantly said, shrugging. “I was fighting a _dragon_.” 

Virgil pulled his legs a little closer to his chest. 

Dee had to know the truth. He always did - you couldn’t lie without having a truth to lie about in the first place. Gasping for another breath of air, Virgil fought back against a fresh round of tears. Dee had to _hate_ him right now for what he had done to Creativity. For what he had done to Thomas. Morality and Logic barely liked him, and he wasn’t going to go to _that_ side. Dee was going to leave him, and he was going to be all alone, and Thomas was going to hate him too, and, and-

“Anxiety,” Dee said from beside him, his voice cutting through the panic. When had Dee gotten so close to him, and when had he started crouching beside him? “What are five things you notice about my face right now?” 

Virgil took a shaky breath.

“...Your cheek is red from scratching it,” he said. Dee gave a nod. “Your hair is messy. You...You have a zit next to your nose. Your lips are chapped. And...And…”

He searched Dee’s face.

“...Your eye looks like it has something in it,” Virgil finished. Dee blinked in response, raising a hand up to rub the eye in question. It was right above where his rash was. That was worrying, too, but the exercise was what he needed to slow his breathing. 

“I must have gotten some dust in it,” Dee said.

Virgil wasn’t entirely convinced, but then he realized something else.

“...Dee?” he quietly asked. “Where’s Creativity?”

Dee turned.

The bed was empty.

**xXx**

Patton had been excited about a new side.

Logan and him had just been talking with Anxiety about how much Thomas was changing. Patton had gotten nostalgic, and the conversation - which had only happened by chance - had turned to Thomas’s past creations. Logic was the one who first suggested that they were childish; Anxiety was the one who started getting worried about it. 

And, _well_ , it was hard for him not to share that worry. Friends and family were important to Thomas. The thought of losing them because they didn’t share Thomas’s imagination had scared him, as well as the thought that Thomas might not come across as good.

Still, talking about Creativity without Creativity being there had left a bad taste in his mouth. Patton had been planning on seeing him right after the conversation ended. But then that new side had appeared, and Patton had decided he would kill two birds with one stone. He would say hello to the new side (a new friend!) and talk about everything with Creativity. He was sure they could come up with _something_.

But they hadn’t been able to find Creativity.

They found the new side, bleeding and injured in the forest. It was Logan’s idea to bring him back to the main room, and it was Logan’s idea to hold off on searching for Creativity.

Then the side had woken up.

And he had said he was Creativity, even when he couldn’t be.

Creativity wasn’t like _this_. Creativity was a wild, free spirit, with a darker edge that Patton had always had trouble coming to terms with. Even if they didn’t agree on everything, Patton _liked_ that Creativity. That Creativity was familiar, and had always been there. Patton couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t exist.

Creativity would have threatened them with a sword. That much was true. And Creativity was showy, too. But Creativity would have come up with a more creative, deadly threat, and wouldn’t have seemed like such a purified version of a prince.

“I’m Creativity,” the side whispered, voice hesitant. “I-I have to be. Who else would I be?”

Logan didn’t give an answer.

Patton wished he would.

“I don’t know, kiddo,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time Thomas had a new side…” 

“There must be some explanation,” Logan mused. “Why would Thomas make a side that has the same function as another one?”

“Because they’re the same sides, pocket-protector,” the side insisted. He didn’t sound so sure, even as he looked between Patton and Logan. “If I wasn’t Creativity, then I would have to be Deceit. And I am _not_ a liar-” 

An inkling of an idea latched onto Patton.

Turning away from the new side to look at Logan, Patton hesitantly asked, “Could Deceit trick a side?”

Logan frowned and crossed his arms.

“It’s hard to say,” he answered. He mulled over it for another moment. “Even if he could, I can’t see why he would waste his time doing it. Why would he want the new side to think he’s Creativity, or for one of us to think that?” 

Patton gave him a very confused look in response.

Logan, in turn, started to pace around the main room. Patton let his gaze follow Logan, watching as he circled around the bed with a hand underneath his chin. “We need to talk with Deceit-”

“Logan?” Patton suddenly interrupted. “Where did the new side go?”

The side - and the sword - had both vanished when Patton was looking away.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 4**

They were ignoring him-

_-just like they always did._

He usually didn’t mind-

_-but the thoughts were **so** hard to fight right now._

He couldn’t stand around any longer. He had to _leave_. He had to get away from a discussion that made him out to be a liar, and a discussion that made him feel like his entire world was falling apart around him.

 _So he went to the world that would always provide him comfort. It wasn’t the same anymore. He could feel that, as he fought back against the doubt and the chaos in his mind._

He walked down a worn stone path, conjuring up tree after tree as he walked into the darkness. A heavy silence hung over the air. He knew he could conjure up a bird or two if he wanted, but he couldn’t find the strength in him.

_A tower stood over the forest. The tower wasn’t **right**. He was trying to make it dark-_

-but the pristine white bricks kept being corrupted by darkness. The vines that curled around its base and reached towards the sky kept becoming gnarled and withered no matter how much he thought about them becoming something else.

_He **was** Creativity. This was supposed to be his domain. No one could ever create like he could. Something inside of him must have been horribly wrong if his own powers were failing to work the way they should._

They were wrong to doubt him. They were wrong to think he wasn’t who he said he was, and wrong to worry. This wasn’t some trick. He didn’t know what had happened to him, but he would fix it. How could he call himself the creative side if he didn’t solve this minor inconvenience? 

_He entered through a rotten door and climbed up a crumbling set of steps._

The rope bit at his hands as he climbed up the ladder dangling down from the highest floor. He would find the damsel he was supposed to rescue earlier there-

_-and would be able to see the dragon approach from the wide, clear window that looked out into the forests below._

He needed to change how he looked. Not because he didn’t like how unfamiliar his clothes and own face were right now-

_-but because he had a role he needed to fit._

So he made himself the finest armor most befitting of the most valiant knight-

_-and reached the final floor._

The princess was standing there in all of her maidenly beauty. Her long golden locks, blue eyes and flowing dress were straight out of a fairy tale.

_He could see the dragon in the distance, flapping its wings in powerful gusts._

But the princess wasn’t alone in the tower. There was another person standing there as well. Someone that, no matter how hard he tried to remember making them, simply hadn’t been conjured by his imagination. They were a knight, but different than him: their armor was the deepest, darkest black.

_The knight’s glinted as he moved away from the princess. He hadn’t even noticed the rope ladder when he entered the castle. Maybe it had been another thought he had been desperate to push away - just one in many. The knight hesitantly raised their sword, as if they didn’t quite know why they were there._

The intruder’s movements were familiar as the two began to circle around one another. There was something about how they held their sword and watched him that reminded him of someone else, but he couldn’t figure out who that someone was.

_He could easily run his sword through them. He was itching to do just that. The dragon had stopped its approach, and the damsel had gone still. But when he went to push the sword through the knight’s armor, he found that they were blocking his attack with an ease that should have been impossible._

It wasn’t supposed to be this hard to wage a fight against an imaginary foe. He could have blamed any of the other sides, but none of them ever had stayed in his realm long enough to pick something like this up.

_They danced across the tower’s floor, blades clashing as they tried to best one another. They alternated between defensive and offensive. Neither one could gain the upper hand. Victories were just momentary._

They had said there was another side. Maybe _this_ was that mysterious side. And if he could prove that there was another side besides him, then he could reclaim his role as the true Creativity. He had to go on the offensive.

_He had to do something unexpected._

He plunged his sword forward-

_-pushing past metal in fragile human skin._

The sword hurt as he rushed down its blade. But his opponent never saw the lunge coming, even as they mirrored his attack in every way.

_He wrapped his hands around the other knight’s helmet and gave it a hard, strong jerk._

Throwing the helmet to the ground and hearing it clatter off to the side of the room, he pulled back from the knight and his sword. He was too close and too caught up in the adrenaline of it all to register the face that looked back at him.

_His sword clattered to the ground._

“You’re me,” he whispered, eyes widening in shock. Their voices spoke in an eerie, startled unison.

_“No,” he snarled. “You can’t be me. **I’m** Creativity.”_

“They said there was another side,” he insisted. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to disprove the imposter standing before him, or trying to prove to himself that everything was still right in the fragile world he had created for himself. “You have to be that other side. Because you can’t be Thomas’s creativity if _I_ am.” 

_His arms fell limply to his side, and he gave the boy in front of him a long look. He looked like a hero, standing there with his beautiful white outfit and sash the color of blood. He didn’t even have the white streak in his hair._

What if Thomas thought his creativity had to change? What if the side before him was the one meant to be Creativity now, and he was just some reject? Some pale imitation of the much better, much more improved version. All of his ideas were _bland_ right now compared to what he was usually able to think of. 

_He picked up his sword-_

-and started to walk towards the way he came.

_But then he paused and looked back at his mirror image, distorted yet clearly him all the same._

“I don’t understand,” he whispered. “I did everything right.”

_“I thought Thomas liked my ideas,” he muttered, only to realize that the new Creativity was talking at the same time as him. He fell silent and stared at him._

“...You thought Thomas liked your ideas?” he hesitantly asked. “But you’re _new_. How could you have time to make new ideas-”

_“I’m not new,” he protested. “ **You’re** the new one. I’m the one who was here first.” _

They studied each other.

_He rested the tip of his sword on the ground, the other side doing the same._

He wasn’t Logic. He didn’t have an explanation already dancing at the tip of his tongue. But the beginning of an idea was starting to come to - a strange, absurd idea that didn’t make much sense, but also made more sense than this conversation. “What did you create last before this?”

_“Poison fangs!” he impulsively replied. The other side took a step back - he was afraid, just like Deceit and Anxiety had been. He reveled in that reaction, even though he knew he wasn’t supposed to. He was supposed to be the **hero**. Not a villain. _

He blinked. 

“I was the one who made those,” he said. “You couldn’t have made them...”

_“Unless we’re the same person!” he finished._

“I was rescuing a damsel-”

_“-and fighting a man-eating dragon.”_

“Deceit came to ask where Anxiety was-” 

_“-but I didn’t know. And everything hurt so, so **much** , like my head was just about to burst open!” _

“He thought I just didn’t care.” 

_“I did! But the headache made it **so** hard to think.” _

“And then I passed out.”

_“Dee found me in the woods! I couldn’t stop all of the thoughts rushing through my head. They’re so dark and scary, but I like them. Isn’t that funny?”_

“ _That’s_ where they went!” he exclaimed. “All of my ideas are _boring_. I like them, but they’re just…”

_“G to my R?”_

He snapped. “Exactly!” 

_They fell back into silence._

Without actually saying what they were planning on doing, the two returned to the window. They looked out at the dragon, frozen mid-air, and watched as the world they had created began to fade away. Soon, they were standing in a slightly glorified version of Thomas’s bedroom. It looked like his old room had, back before whatever had happened to them, but it just felt wrong sharing it with another person.

_“We need another bed,” he decided. “Because the thought of sharing a bed is giving me thoughts I **really** don’t like. I don’t want to do any of that with…” He faltered, a dismissive yet confused look flickering across his face. “...whatever you are to me.” _

“Hey!” he protested. The other him just smirked. Pushing aside his irritation at the tone, he mulled over the solution. “What about a bunk bed?” 

_“I call bottom bunk!” he announced as the bed sprung into existence. “Then I can be the monster under the bed!”_

He gave a grin at the joke. He was starting to like the idea of having another him. After all, everyone already came in pairs: Logic and Morality, Deceit and Anxiety, and now-

_“...What do we call ourselves now?”_

“We can’t _both_ be called Creativity,” he said. “That would just get confusing.” 

_He plopped himself down on the bottom bunk. They needed Logic for this, but he didn’t feel like leaving his room right now._

He sat down next to the other him. As he kicked his legs against the side of the bed, an idea suddenly popped into his head. It was something he hadn’t thought much about at the time, but something that really needed addressing.

_“Logic called Morality Patton before they realized I was awake,” the other him said. “What if we gave each other actual names?”_

He leaned back and watched as the other Creativity mulled it over. From the downright evil grin on his face, it seemed like he approved of the idea. Now, just to think of something that fit them both! They were essentially the same person, and reminded him of how Thomas interacted with his brothers, so it would be _fun_ to name each other after twins-

_“I got it!” he announced, jumping up and immediately hitting his head against the top bunk. Clutching the top of his head - though it didn’t actually hurt - he put a hand on his chest. “ **I’ll** be Remus, and **you’ll** be Roman!”_

The names sounded familiar. Thomas had just heard the story of Romulus and Remus the other day - they were the twins who had founded Rome. (if he had asked Logic, Logic would have said that Romulus was the one who did the actual founding, but the thought didn’t occur to him.) “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I be Romulus?”

_He held out both of his hands. Wiggling his fingers, he said, “Creativity has ten letters! Roman has five, and Remus has five. It’s like we split our name in two!”_

“Roman it is, then!” 

_Remus grinned - even though **he** remembered what the other side didn’t. It just made sense for him to be the lesser of the two. After all, who would ever want the darker, more annoying half of creativity? _

Remus gave a mock salute.

_“Roman and Remus, reporting for duty!” he shouted._

There was a pause.

_A snicker escaped Remus. A second later, one escaped Roman, too. It wasn’t long before they were doubled over in laughter._

And Roman, who was used to laughing by himself, quickly decided he liked laughing with someone else.


End file.
